Social Media for B2B: It CAN be done

This was originally posted on my friend Tommy Landry's blog, Return on Now, as a guest post on February 8, 2010.

Why is it that when it comes to conversation about social media, business-to-business (B2B) seems to draw the short stick every single time? As someone that does a lot of webcasts, blog posts and speaking gigs, the questions/comment that always comes up is, "what about B2B examples." Fortunately for me, I'm able to mention companies like BreakingPoint Systems and Hubspot that do a great job tapping into the power of social media but I often wish there were more examples (with public results) that I could discuss.

In thinking about this topic, one of the main reasons that B2B has taken a little longer to adopt social media into its marketing mix is that it's harder to do effectively. It's also feels risky because there is less control then there is in other channels. With that said, I personally believe that B2B companies stand to benefit the most from social media because they live and die based on the strength of their customer relationships. On top of that, many B2B companies actually know exactly know who their prospective customers are so seeking those folks out in a meaningful way and creating relationships with them can have a huge impact on the bottom line.

Given that I'm a prescriptive kind of guy, I'd feel remiss if I didn't offer up some ways that companies can start thinking about putting social media into practice. There are obviously tons of ways but here are a few (including a diagram that provides more color commentary on item number three):

1. Start listening. This is easier to do than you think. Set up a Google alert for your company's name, your competitors' names and keywords for your industry. If you're already doing this, consider hiring a "listening" service like Techrigy, Radian6 or Meltwater Buzz. This will help you find out where all the relevant conversations in your space are happening.
   
2. Create a Twitter account for your business. However, resist the urge to put up links to press releases, product specs and links to press that are signing your business's praises (at least out of the gate). Instead, talk about things that people in your industry care about. For instance, if you create bill payment software, talk about the needs of small to medium sized businesses across the financial spectrum (payroll, credit, vendor managment, etc.) Link to reports and industry analysis. Point out other people's blog posts and magazine articles.
3. Set up a blog. Before you do this though, make sure you have someone (ideally internal) that is willing to commit to posting at least 5-6 times/month. This can be someone on your marketing, product, or PR teams or even better, one of your executives. Think about creating an editorial calendar to help guide your topics. Most importantly, spend time looking at other industry related blogs -- in fact, you should spend at least a month doing this before you set up your own blog. Be sure to comment on those blogs (talk about the topic, not your company). This will help with getting to know the relevant "social" people in the space.
4. Create an online community. Once you've gotten comfortable with items 1-3, start thinking about a online community. Ideally, this is for both customers and prospective customers. Some businesses feel more comfortable about creating private communities where customers can talk to one another. The key either way is to hire a great community manager and let them help you create relevant content via webinars, blog posts and conference calls (see diagram below). A community manager will also help you draw out your customers and insure that conversations stay relevant and productive.
5. Measure, measure, measure. This is less difficult than you might imagine. This really should start with looking at your current goals i.e. new customers, greater retention, larger share of wallet, referrals, etc. Then make sure you benchmark e.g. look at your webstats and current KPI's before you launch your social efforts. Then look at how your moving the bar over time. A key place to look is at your web analytics to see what kind of traffic and engagement your Twitter feed and/or blog efforts are driving. Also, it doesn't hurt to survey customers and ask them if your efforts are impacting their loyalty to your company.

I won't lie to you, everything I mentioned above takes effort. But it's worth trying, especially when it's done right, because it will yield results. One thing that I failed to mention is the importance of integrating the recommendations above with your existing marketing/channel activity. Social media doesn't live in a vacuum and if nobody can find the fruit of your efforts, you may as well not have exerted the time and resources.

Am I missing anything? You bet I am. But that's where you come in. What types of social media have you tried? What's worked? Please feel free to share in the comments section below.

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 33: Reunited Edition!

It's been a few weeks since my podcast partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, and I have been able to do a Quick-n-Dirty podcast together. For two weeks in a row, travel prevented me from joining her on our weekly show. Fortunately, we had a couple of more than capable substitutes in Brian Solis (author and principal of FutureWorks) and Greg Matthews, director of innovation at Humana. Write ups from the shows with Brian and Greg can be found here and here on Jennifer's ZDNet blog.

This week, Jennifer and I were back in the saddle again with me broadcasting live from Jackson Hole, WY (yes, I took one for the team). We had an action packed show starting with our featured social network of the week, Hollrr. Neither Jennifer or I had had much of chance to play with Hollrr but saw some decent potential in this site that Mashable likens to "Foursquare for product discovery" (full review here). Both Jennifer and I appreciated Hollrr's off-the-shelf integration with other social networks like Twitter and Facebook and I personally look forward to getting product recommendations from friends and connections. Oh yeah, they have a pretty cool logo too.

Next up was our featured guest (and former "Twitterer of the week,") Simon Mainwaring. If you don't know Simon, you should. Officially, he is a branding consultant, advertising creative director, blogger, author and speaker. A former Nike creative at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, and worldwide creative director for Motorola at Ogilvy, he now consults for brands and creative companies that are re-inventing their industries. During this week's show, Simon shared some fascinating updates from a recent trip he took to the Middle East as a guest of the Brookings Institute. The focus was on social media and foreign policy, two disciplines that traditionally don't share the same space. I won't pretend to do Simon's interview justice so just this one time, I'm MANDATING that you listen to at least Simon's portion of the show (starts about 7 mins in and runs for aproximately 25 minutes).

Speaking of "Twitterers of the week," this week's choice was principal of The Community Roundtable (and close friend), Jim Storer. As I mentioned during the show, nobody has done a better job at taking community management skills to Twitter than Jim. Regularly mixing helpful tips, humor, love of bacon and Red Sox commentary into his stream, Jim is a "must add" to anyone's Twitter follow list irrespective of what industry they are in.

Last but not least, our point/counterpoint focused on one of Jennifer's recent blog posts, Twitter: Becoming Nothing Special. Jennifer's post theorizes that the recent announcement of Yahoo's partnership with Twitter pushes them from "new shiny object" into the merely "ordinary" category. While Jennifer didn't see this as all bad, she wondered aloud if this might hurt Twitter's future potential. Taking the opposing side of this issue, I argued that this is exactly what Twitter (and social media) need. Making Twitter and other social networks like "electricity" -- something we don't ever even think about in spite of the critical role it plays in our daily lives -- is a good thing. To me, this means that it's so ingrained in our daily lives, personal and professional, that we can't live without it.

Looking forward to next week's show, Jennifer and I will switch places and I will be working with friend and founder of Oneforty, Laura Fitton, as my guest host. Jennifer will be attending the RSA Conference and thus will be out of pocket for this week's Quick-n-Dirty. I'm sure she'll want to listen to the show (as will you). Fortunately for her, our shows are archived here and on iTunes (search on "quickndirty").

Engaging Your Customers Across the Social Web

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to over a hundred of Dallas, TX's brightest social media minds at the monthly Social Media Club, Dallas meeting. Not only did I meet dozens of new people that I look forward to staying in touch with at the event but I had the opportunity to bounce some ideas, suggestions and case studies off of the crowd. I also fielded some pretty awesome questions like:

• Should we be paying attention to Google Buzz?
• Are branded online communities a real trend?
• How do you let a client know when they are doing social wrong?

Unfortunately, I don't think anyone documented the occasion with video but I did put my slides up on Slideshare. I've also included links to the pictures that Cynthia Smoot put up on her Gangway Advertising Flickr page.

The presentation is here:

Engaging your Customers Across the Social Web

View more presentations from Aaron Strout.

And if you check quickly enough (those folks at the Dallas Social Media Club are very conversational AND are really good at incorporating the #smcdallas hashtag), you can catch some of the highlights from the crowd. You can also click on the collage below to see Cynthia's pics.

A big thanks to Mike D. Merrill and Colin Alsheimer for inviting me to speak. Props also go to Jessica Nunez for her awesome intro, Aaron Bollinger of KickApps for sponsoring and kicking things off, the fine folks over at Zoe's Kitchen for providing an amazing spread and Muroch Partners for hosting. And finally, big ups to Bill Fanning for driving with me for three hours up and three hours back from Austin to Dallas back to Austin. Viva la Genesis!

Other great people I met (I know I'm leaving some out so sorry in advance)... Lauren Fernandez, Jill McFarland, Cosmin Ghiurau, Erica Martinez, Amanda Hawkins,  Cameron Gawley, Kirby Sander, Kathy Catoe, Alyssa Gardina, Tom McCracken, David Swinney, Ivan Leon, Kat Farmer, Scott Duke, Barbar Bhatti,  Kelly Welborn, Connie Hannon, Matt Smith, Kate Aronson, @vsellis, John Langdon, 

Hey AT&T, if it Ain't Broke...

As an iPhone user, I've always been a bit annoyed by the way it handles voice calls. Up until recently, I was definitely an apologist explaining to my friends that had Blackberry's and other phones that, "yeah, AT&T's service might not be the best but 1) I don't talk on the phone much and 2) the iPhone's form and functionality more than make up for that fact." After experiencing more than 20 dropped calls during the last couple of weeks here in Austin, TX, I'm not so sure.

It's no secret that AT&T is an anchor around Apple's neck on the iPhone deal. [sidebar, if you haven't read this post by Fake Steve Jobs, it is pee-your-pants funny -- warning, it contains some foul language]. Yes, they may have been the only carrier big enough at the time to handle the iPhone's data needs but since then (hello 4g on Sprint), Apple's deal with AT&T is looking more and more albatross-like every day... to the point where I am considering buying a different device (gulp). Yup, I just said it.

In addition to the obvious annoyances that I've mentioned above, there are a few things that are driving my willingness to consider a different smart phone. For one, I keep asking myself why it took three years, an embarassing shit storm in New York, a failed multi-million dollar advertising response to Verizon's virtual "pants-ing," and thousands of daily mentions of how much AT&T sucks to realize that maybe they should spend some money and actually fix the problem at hand. I also can't help but wonder why they've yet to really embrace social media when that could go such a long way to help change their perception in the marketplace.

Who knows, maybe I'll stick with the iPhone in spite of the ongoing dropped calls. But probably not. I've already agreed to test out Sprint's new Samsung Moment. And if that doesn't take, Google's Nexus One could be in my future. While I love my iPhone, I think the only thing that's going to save it is if Steve Job's can wiggle out of his contract and strike a deal with Sprint or Verizon. Otherwise, I'm not stickin' around.

Image courtesy Fastcompany (great article btw on this very topic)

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 31: Quick-n-dirty style...

I LOVE doing the weekly Quick-n-Dirty podcast show every week with co-host, Jennifer Leggio. It's not only professionally rewarding but also a lot of fun. I'm not going to lie though, finding the time to do the "recap" post is always a little challenging. So this week, I'm going to do it quick and dirty style.

• Social network of the week is the Daily Booth. Think of Flickr meets Twitter where members are encouraged to snap a picture of themselves once a day/365 days a year. Both Jennifer and I agreed that this may not be our cup of tea (lots of GenY-ers) but it is an interesting concept, especially when you watch the live feed.
• Our special guest this week was Mr. SocialNerdia himself, Esteban Contreras. Not only is he an uber blogger/podcaster but he was newly anointed as social media manager for Samsung Electronics. Since Esteban spends a lot of time for Samsung tweeting, we asked him a lot of Twitter-centric questions. My favorite was, what if Twitter goes away tomorrow? Jen followed up with another great one asking, if you do pick another network, what are you doing to grow relationships with your enthusiasts in those other networks. All in all, Esteban was a great sport and even participated in the very chatty chatroom.
• Our featured Twitterer of the week is Ron Shevlin, former Forrester VP and current senior analyst at Aite Group. He's also a damn funny tweeter and a really thoughtful (and contrarian) marketing blogger. If you haven't checked him yet, change that in a hurry.
• Finally, Jennifer and I mixed it up a little bit on during our normal point / counterpoint session. Instead of duking it out, we talked about the premier of one of our favorite shows, LOST. If you watch the show but missed the premier, I won't spoil it for you. If you did watch it and want to hear what we said, check out the archive of the show here.

Wow - so how's that for fast? Did I miss something? Well, then leave it in the comments. By the way, I won't be joining you all next week. Our friend and rock star entrepreneur/PR 2.0 king, Brian Solis will be filling in for me. Be sure to check that show out next Thursday at 6 PM ET / 3 PM PT.